“I am more interested in the evocative qualities in the landscape than the narrative. Once I find a potential subject I’ll then ask the more formal questions about contrast, space, light, atmosphere and design.
How will it become a painting?”
- Jeffrey Reed
Fall Field, 9” x 9”, Oil On Panel
Jeffrey Reed always finds inspiration in his surroundings. Returning to Ireland this past summer for another month-long visit to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Reed continued to be fascinated by the unique landscape and the dramatic changes of weather along the west coast of Ireland. Half the paintings in the current exhibit, derive from this annual trip where what has become familiar is combined with the daily surprise of the new. But Reed also looks to his immediate environs for subject matter – Philadelphia, Lancaster, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and Maine provide just as rich a source.
The small scale of Reed’s canvases are in striking contrast to the artist’s ability to convey the drama and vastness of his subject matter. The intimacy draws the individual viewer into the painting, allowing one to experience part of the process by which the painting is made. Dedicated to the concept of en plein air, Reed’s choice of scale enhances the immediacy of his response to constantly changing environments. Color, basic forms, and the light from a situation can be recorded as a direct experience. Later, when the artist takes his works into the studio, the painting and its subject are separated and Reed looks at his paintings and engages them on their own individual merits as works of art.
"There is a certain kind of poetry created when light and atmosphere are combined with the shapes and colors of a place. I continue to find inspiration in the landscape I look for the uniqueness of a day or time and hope that in my response I can evoke something of that experience."
- Jeffrey Reed
Reed cultivates quiet connection to the world through his observational paintings of the Pennsylvanian and Irish landscapes. He paints vistas of fields, farms, and gardens with houses and barns nestled and embedded in the countryside which have been cultivated. Bathed in light of the sun and the shade of nomadic clouds, his paintings reveal how we live with the landscape, how we build in beautiful places, and reveal ways in which utility and beauty may coexist.
In choosing to create at the scale of the handheld, Reed sets aside the grand gesture of competing with nature in favor of a painting which invites deep connection and personal intimacy. Through pragmatism and poetry, essential qualities of Irish and Pennsylvanian cultures, Reed’s paintings beckon attention through understatement and capture subtle qualities of a place available only to those willing to return season after season.
Ballycastle Field, 8” x 8”, Oil On Panel
Jeffrey Reed continues to return to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, in County Mayo Ireland, to paint for a month each summer. Working on the west coast of Ireland, with the dramatic changes of weather and coastal landscape, there is always the familiar combined with the surprise of the new. The new light, the new atmosphere and the new experience are always right outside the door.
Turk’s Turban and Pumpkin, 10" x 11", Oil On Panel 2020
Working en plein air is important to Reed. Years ago, he tried painting indirectly from his subject matter - working in his studio from small studies, drawings, and photographs. This questioning and experimentation in his process clarified and strengthened Reed's commitment to the value of direct observation. Later, once he has been able to establish what was necessary to observe on-site - the color, basic forms, and the light from a situation - the artist takes his works into the studio. It is in the studio where the painting and its subject are separated; where Reed looks at his paintings and engages them on their own individual merits as works of art.
Reed received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, studied at the Skowhegan School of Art, and received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Jeffrey Reed lives in Pennsylvania where he is an Associate Professor at the Community College of Philadelphia and the Head of the Art Department. Each summer he paints and teaches the Western coast of Ireland at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. Reed has been represented by Gross McCleaf for more than 25 years, and has shown his paintings in Philadelphia, New York, throughout the East Coast, and in Ireland.
Low Sky, 12" x 18", Oil On Canvas
(Courtesy Of Painting Perceptions)
Painting Perceptions Interview With Jeffrey Reed
By Larry Groff
2013
Larry Groff: Can you tell us something about your background? What were your early years like as a painter and how did you become a landscape painter? Who have been important influences for you?
Jeffrey Reed: I grew up outside of Annapolis Maryland on the Magothy River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. All of my interests seemed to be centered around the outdoors, either on or near the water. It is where I looked for the pulse of the day and felt most alive and connected to the world. I developed an interest in drawing and painting at an early age and it seemed natural to paint the landscape as a subject.
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Gross McCleaf Gallery invites you to experience the magic of summer with a group exhibition titled Summer Playlist. Curated like a finely tuned mixtape, this vibrant selection of works explores seasonal themes of celebration, relaxation, and engagement with nature.
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to share a new body of abstract oil paintings by Benjamin Passione in No Time To Be Shy. These vibrant paintings mark Passione's continued exploration of atmospheric color fields, layered with his linear, script-like markings. These new works are larger, lighter and brighter than before and feature the emergence of spherical shapes drawn in Passione’s signature style. Passione’s poetic titles continue to offer inspiration and invite the viewer to search the scene for possible hidden imagery and underlying narratives.
“I believe artists must make space for pleasure in painting, both in the act of painting and in the pleasure of viewing it.”
-Lauren Whearty
In her first solo exhibition with Gross McCleaf Gallery, titled Painter’s Table, Lauren Whearty celebrates cheerful color and playful patterns in a contemporary take on the artistic tradition of still life painting. With a keen eye for possibilities within this genre, Whearty embraces a feminist perspective, using everyday objects as building blocks to create her own distinctive universe. Each item she incorporates becomes a referential exploration of art history and the process of image creation, adding depth and meaning to her work.
Long before recorded history, humans identified divinity in the natural world. Across the globe, cave paintings and petroglyphs represent the land, the animals and the supernatural. Prehistoric burial mounds and henges of Northern Europe align with equinoxes and solstices. At Newgrange in Ireland, decorated stone carvings record the phases of the moon and depict rays emerging over the horizon at sunrise. Contemporary viewers can only infer the exact meanings of these monumental relics, etched with waves, spirals and diamonds juxtaposed with recognizable imagery.
As contemporary innovation, architecture, technology and design increasingly position each person as the master of their own exclusive universe, the artists in Concerning The Spiritual In Landscape have humbly venerated the life-giving light, ever-present matter and perpetual cycles of nature that bring forth all things.
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
Painting is meant to be seen, not talked about. Painters are drawn to things, not concepts or doctrines. What counts is what is in front of them, the very thing itself—whether an object or a vista—not an idea about the thing. For a painter, the only ideas that count are pictorial ones. Matters of fact are primary. These include the material facts of paint, the cookery of getting it right, manipulation of brushes and color chords—all physical, earth-bound matters. Fairfield Porter was blunt: “An art that finds ideas more real than things is attractive to the unemployed intellectual.”
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to announce two solo exhibitions of new paintings by gallery artists, Natasha Das and Max Mason and a collection of mini exhibitions, featuring the work of Giovanni Casadei, Rhea Cutillo, Ying Li, Scott Noel, Thomas Paquette, Jeffrey Reed and Val Rossman.
Textures created with thread are to Natasha Das what brushstrokes are for other artists: fundamental, visceral, expressive elements. Das’ labor-intensive compositions convey her unique voice by representing an engagement with both abstraction and the weaving tradition of her native India, lending an autobiographical component to her work. . .
